A Durham coal miner's son's true story

Part 1

I was born in the 1950's in a small pit village in the North East of England.

This is my story, a true story, every word of it.

First of all let me paint you a background picture.

The North East was a myriad of pit villages each lying within about 5 miles of each other, all close to the NE sea coast of England. Each village had a pit head where the winding gear and buildings could always be seen. The winding gear was the big winding wheel that held the cable, that lowered the men, animals (pit horses) and machinery down the mine shaft to the workings below. The pits often consisted of (many) 2 tunnels linked by a cutting tunnel. You travelled down either of the 2 side tunnels until you reached the joining cutting tunnels. The side tunnels often had to be reached by loco and were often many miles out under the sea. The cutting tunnel held the cutting wheel that travelled across the coalface cutting the coal and moving the face forward. As the coalface moved forward the 2 side tunnels were extended. At the cutting face the coal dropped onto a conveyor belt, in front of the belt was where men crawled or crouched along, usually with a height of often no more than 3 feet and about 200 yards long.

As the coalface moved forward the roof behind (which had been cut) was then supported, either by hydraulic supports or thick wooden beams like train sleeper beams. As the weight of the roof grew heavy the roof would often collapse behind the progressing coalface, often sounding like thunder, and scaring the men working underground. So much coal was removed from the ground that the collapsing roof would often lead to subsidence above ground. The land in some of the coal villages had been known to drop at least 6 feet below what it started at.

Nearly every man in the village worked down the pit on various shifts.

Each man in the pit village therefore knew every other man working in the same pit. There was usually one street which was the main shopping centre for all the women. Women did the shopping as men worked so physically hard and on various shifts. It also followed that most of the women in the village knew each other, at least they knew someone who knew someone else in the village. The villages normally had a couple of schools depending upon the religious denomination that you belonged too; a couple of churches and a couple of baptist chapels. The village I belonged to also heralded a bakery, the other alternative place to work. The villages had at certain locations towns or cities, and seaside type resorts where you could travel to by bus or car for that occasional treat of a day out. The city itself was Durham and was the centre of Durham big meeting where each pit village would hold their yearly festival. Durham big meeting day would see scores of miners, with their local colliery brass band , and village flag parading through the village before everyone got onto a bus to Durham, where they all met up. Durham on that day would then become a festival often with the local Labour party leader as the visiting dignitary.

Each pit village usually had at least a couple of village pubs and 1 or 2 clubs, where this provided the nightly entertainment for the men. You could walk past the pub window and smell pipe and tobacco smoke mingled with spilled beer. Inside you could hear men laughing and playing dominoes or darts.

One of the joys and great pastimes in the NE was either greyhound or pidgeon racing, and not to mention watching football at the local football clubs such as Newcastle or Sunderland.

Each person, especially the men, had a true sense of identity and a sense of belonging to something to that which was greater than the individual. This sense of loyalty and belonging, along with the hardships and near poverty of each village brought men together as nothing else would, barring wars or sorrow.